Game Design Journal: Sigils

The latest game design dev journal has been posted on the Chronicles of Spellborn official site. This week's topic is sigils, which are used in the game to enhance a character's combat characteristics.

Feature article: Sigils

by El "Selachii" Drijver

A well known fact about Spellborn is the non-stat armor and weapons. To make sure players can still customize, tweak and tune their fighting characteristics whichever way they like, we have a wide variety of Sigils. These can be collected from different sources in game like quests and loot.

Sigils are items with 'magical effects' which can be used when they are equipped one way or another. There are three types of sigils: Skill-, Jewelry- and Weapon sigils. I will handle the Jewelry- and Weapon sigils first as 'item sigils' and conclude with the Skill sigils

Item Sigils

Like mentioned above there are two types of item sigils, one for jewelry and one for weapons. First up, jewelry isn't visible, you won't be able to see the rings or necklaces on your character in game, only in your 'paper doll' screen.

Both weapon and jewelry act as containers for sigils, but the amount of sigils that can be fitted is determined in a different manner. The jewelry has an amount of slots dependant on the item level and rarity. Whereas the weapons have an amount of sigil slots dependant on your player level, adding 1 every 10 levels. The reason we do it differently for jewelry is to reward players that put in that extra effort to find that rare item. The reason we actually can do it like this, is because jewelry is not affected by the 'dress to impress' motto. If the slots on the weapons would work the same and be dependant on the item level and rarity, we'd be back to square one when it comes to player customization. Players would be forced to upgrade their weapon because of the amount of sigil slots, even though they don't like the look of it.